Gaetano Mosca
April 1, 1858—Nov. 8, 1941
Sicilian jurist and philosopher
An important factor in the progress of socialist propaganda, and one of its most direct and immediate causes, has been the broadening of suffrage, or, more exactly, universal suffrage, which has come to be more and more widely adopted in Europe in deference to the principles of the radical school and to democratic logic. Now the danger in broad based suffrage is not so much that if proletarians get the right to drop their ballots into a box their genuine representatives may come to be in the majority in our political assemblies, as many fear or hope. After all, whatever the election system, control will always remain with the more influential classes, rather than with the more numerous classes. The danger lies rather in the fact that in order to gain an advantage over their rivals most candidates do all they can to pamper popular sentiments and prejudices. That attitude leads to promises and professions of faith that are based on the postulates of socialism. The natural result of the system is that the more honest and energetic people are alienated from public life, compromises and moral reservations become more and more the rule, while the ranks of the so-called conservatives become more and more stultified, both intellectually and morally.
Reprinted from The Ruling Class by Gaetano Mosca, p.310-311, McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., 1939
